


Suffering and Survival

by JustARandomIdiot



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game), Story Thieves Series - James Riley
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Revenge, Survival, also i dont rlly know how else to tag this, also its best to have finished the story thieves series to read this, okay not tagging all the interactions bc. theres too many characters, sorry if youre reading for dont starve content, the other dont starve characters wont show up for a while btw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27105154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustARandomIdiot/pseuds/JustARandomIdiot
Summary: They thought that Nobody was gone for good, but it turns out that's not the case. The possibility of Nobody returning from the Pure Possibility had always existed, and because it was possible, it happened, and he's ready for revenge. This time, he's teamed up with Charlie, the current queen of the Constant, who's eager for new victims to bring into her realm.The kids are now going to have to learn to endure in a world that's actively working to kill them, filled with suffering and survival, and they'd better hope that they don't starve.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 5





	1. Prologue

It was chaos.  _ He _ was chaos.

He felt everything. Yet he felt nothing.

It was all loud, painful. But at the same time, it was unbearably silent, nothing existing.

No, there  _ was  _ existing. Everything was existing. Or everything  _ could  _ exist.

He could exist. But he didn’t exist, while at the same time, he did.

It was agonizing pain. He felt anger, terror, rage. But he also felt tired, dead, indifferent.

He cared so much, yet he didn’t care at all.

Was this death? No, he felt alive. But also not. He could remember what had happened, but he also forgot. Where was he?  _ Who _ was he? What had happened?

There was a girl… maybe? And a boy, he was sure. They did something… but what?

He had a plan. It was a good plan. Probably. But his plan failed.

He lost. 

He was burning with hatred from his defeat, yet he could honestly care less.

Besides, he didn’t exist anymore.

Until he did.

And this time, there was no chaos. At least, not the chaos he had just been experiencing.

He remembered who he was now. He was Nobody, the man who learned to completely rewrite himself. The one who was supposed to free the fictional worlds from the authors. He could have succeeded, he  _ almost _ succeeded, but Bethany Sanderson, the girl born of both fictional and nonfictional, and Owen Conners, the nonfictional boy, had stopped him. The two of them and their group of friends, all from different fictional worlds.

He remembered his rage, how they had dared to stand against him, how they had dared to say he was wrong, that fictional and nonfictional were never meant to be separate.

And now he had returned from the Pure Possibility, ready for vengeance. The question was: where was he?

“How did you enter this realm?!” an unfamiliar voice demanded. It was regal, commanding, yet at the same time, a sort of sweetness to it.

Nobody turned to find a strange, tall woman standing above him at the top of a staircase, right in front of a throne. Her black hair was swept behind her ears, a red feather plume standing out from it. Her long, black dress covered her arms and legs, and the fashion of her clothes seemed to scream the 1900s.

Her pale white face stared down at him with disgust and anger, her dark eyes piercing deep into his soul, and Nobody could tell there was chaos in her. But not the chaos that he had just emerged from. No, there was a darkness to her chaos.

“Only  _ I  _ can bring mortals to my realm,” she continued, making her way down the staircase with both grace and power. Physical shadows seemed to trail her steps as she walked.

“However…” she continued, a smile forming on her lips. “I wouldn’t mind another plaything… the Constant gets boring with the same players…”

Being near her presence made him uneasy, but he didn’t let that show. “I am no mere mortal,” he told her, before rewriting himself like he had done many times before. He created a face, one with eyes, a nose, a mouth. He grew out hair from the top of his head, and sprouted clothes and shoes and fingernails from his blank body.

From his featureless base, he rewrote himself into something that resembled a person, one of the authors he had once had control over. He took the form of James Riley.

From the way she watched him morph, he knew that he had surprised her, something that must not have happened often.

“I must say I’m impressed,” she said with a smirk. “Even with Maxy, I’ve never seen a player with powers like yours. I take it you’d survive well here, even despite my and this world’s best attempts.”

With his newly formed mouth, he smiled. This was good, he may have just won her over.

“If I may ask, where  _ is  _ here?”

The woman held her arms out, motioning to everything around her. “This is my realm, the Constant. Once ruled by my partner, but now ruled by me, the Darkness, the Night Monster, or as you may call me, Queen Charlie.”

The Constant? Looking at his surroundings and at Charlie, he could tell this was definitely a fictional world. How else could he explain why everything was so… stylized and two dimensional? Could be a comic, perhaps, or a cartoon of some sort.

A rather dark cartoon, from the looks of it. Typical nonfictionals, creating something edgy for fictionals to suffer through.

But maybe he could turn the tables.

“You said that I would survive this world well, despite your best efforts. What do you mean by that?”

Charlie raised a brow, still smirking. “This realm, the Constant, is my sandbox. Mortals from other worlds are taken by me to survive, if they can. More often than not, they perish, but it’s quite amusing to watch them try.”

A world where mortals could perish? Nobody couldn’t help but smile. This realm was  _ exactly _ what he wanted. As long as he could stay on Charlie’s good side, which would hopefully be easy with what he would propose.

“You also mentioned wanting another plaything,” he told her. “Well, I have an offer.”

Charlie tilted her head. “Go on.”

He got down on his knee, hoping that maybe some humility could help convince her to assist him. “My name is Nobody, a fictional character like you are. I once worked to separate and recreate the fictional worlds from the nonfictional in order to free fictionals like us, but was ultimately defeated by a nonfictional, a half fictional, and their fictional friends under the belief that I was wrong, when I was only doing what was best for all the fictionals.”

  
“You speak a lot of nonsense, but you still haven’t stated what you want.”

“Revenge.” He looked her right in the eye. “Revenge against the children who wronged me.”

Charlie crossed her arms, her fingers tapping against her elbow. “Seeking vengeance against children seems rather petty. Then again, that never stopped Maxy…”

“So will you help me?”

She smiled. “How many new playthings will this bring me?”

Nobody smiled wider than before as he stood up. “Seven. Seven new playthings for you to enjoy in this realm.”

Her eyes lit up, the shadows around them almost laughing. With a dark grin, she held out her hand to him, more shadows dancing on her fingertips. “Then it’s a deal.”


	2. The Constant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It begins...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is kind of dialogue heavy, but it's mostly to establish a bunch of different stuff.

All in all, Owen was not having a good day.

First, he slept through his alarm and missed the school bus, ending up late for school. Then there was that stupid math test he completely forgot about that he totally failed. Then at lunch, it turned out that he didn’t have enough money in his student account to pay for his desert, and had to eat his food desertless. Then of course the rude patrons at the library he had to deal with.

Now, his head was throbbing with unbearable pain as he lay on the ground, his eyes shut tight. Definitely not a good day.

“Say, you fellows don’t look too good,” a familiar voice said from somewhere in front of him. “You’re gonna want to find something to eat before night comes. That is…” A pause. “If you can last that long.” A laugh. “Who knows if you can? The future is just full of _pure possibility_.”

Then what sounded like wind blowing, then nothing.

It was silent. All he heard was the sound of birds chirping and bees buzzing. And the headache was gone.

Owen opened his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was that he wasn’t in the library anymore. He was outside. But the sky was… well, he didn’t know how to describe it. It wasn’t really gray and cloudy, and it wasn’t sunny and bright either. There was something… unsettling about it.

What had happened?

He sat up, trying to remember what he did before. Well, the library was still open, but most of the people had left by then. He was sitting over his homework at the front desk, wishing he could spend time with his friends on Magisteria or Quanterium or Jupiter City instead of doing history, then…

Then nothing. Nothing but the headache and the _very_ familiar voice. Had he blacked out in the middle of homework?

Owen blinked, trying to think if there was anything he did after that. He moved his hand to rub his eye, when he noticed that his arm wasn’t right. First of all, his skin looked pale compared to how it usually looked. Second of all, it looked 2D, like someone had drawn it.

Was this like when he, Bethany, and Kiel jumped into that one book and Kiel used a spell to make them cartoons? He didn’t remember seeing Kiel earlier, though, nor going into a book or portal.

He looked around, seeing that he was out in the grass, surrounded by some evergreens and birch trees. Not only that, his friends were on the ground with him, rubbing their heads and groaning as they sat up as well. They also looked like they were drawn in 2D instead of looking like regular people, their skin colors paler than normal.

“What happened?” Bethany groaned, rubbing her eyes.

Owen’s first thought was that they all looked like they were drawn by Tim Burton. Were they in a Tim Burton movie?

Wait, no, that wasn’t right. Owen watched what looked like a monarch butterfly fly by his face, landing on a pink flower in front of him. That looked _way_ too familiar. He stared back at his friends, noticing how their heads looked way too big for their bodies. No, it couldn’t be… could it?

He quickly got to his feet, searching for something to confirm for sure. They really couldn’t be in–

They were. Behind him was the Florid Postern from the video game Don’t Starve Together.

“Guys,” he said, not taking his eyes off of the Florid Poster , “we have a problem.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Charm just snarked. “My illusion isn’t working!”

Owen turned around to find Charm fiddling with some buttons on her robotic arm. Just like she said, the illusion that was meant to cover up her robotic parts didn’t seem to work, and she seemed really aggravated by that fact.

“Stupid malfunctions,” she muttered, slamming the panel on her robotic arm shut.

“It’s not just that–” Owen started, only to be interrupted by Gwen.

“Did we all go somewhere?” she asked as she stood up, staring at the world around them. “Because I don’t remember leaving Argon VI today.”

“This definitely isn’t Magisteria, either,” Kiel said, getting up as well.

“Bethany, did you jump us into another comic?” Orion asked, studying his arms. “Because I did _not_ agree to another one of these adventures.”

“Guys–”

“No!” Bethany quickly retorted. “I thought this was another prank from Kiel and Kara! I mean, even if I jumped us into a comic, we wouldn’t look like this!” She held out her arm to make her point. “It takes Kiel’s magic to make us look like cartoons!”

“This isn't one of our pranks, I promise!” Kara immediately replied as she stood up, her hands in the air. “Or at least, _I’m_ not part of this!”

“Hey, it wasn’t me either!” Kiel said. “You know I don’t use magic anymore! Not something big like this!”

“GUYS!!!” Owen shouted. _That_ finally got their attention. “I think I know where we are…”

Everyone turned to him expectantly.

“All right, which book?” Charm asked, crossing her arms.

Owen shook his head. “We’re not in a book… we’re in a video game.”

“A video game?”

“Which one?”

Owen glanced back at the Florid Postern, the eye on top seeming to stare down at him. He shuddered, looking away from it.

“Wait,” Bethany said before Owen could answer, pointing to the Florid Postern. “That’s the portal from Don’t Starve Together.”

Owen nodded. “The Florid Postern,” he told her. “And… I think we’re in the game Don’t Starve Together right now.”

The others were silent as they continued to stare at him. 

“Okay, I swear it wasn’t me who brought us here,” Bethany finally said after several moments. 

“Can you at least jump us out?” Owen asked her, hoping that the answer was yes.

Bethany closed her eyes for a few moments, before sighing and shaking her head.

Okay, that wasn’t an option. What else could they do to get out of here?

“Do we _have_ to leave right now?” Gwen asked. “I mean, exploring new fictional worlds is always fun!”

“Not this one,” Owen told her. “The Constant is _not_ a world you want to stay in for long.”

Ugh, of all the video games they could be trapped in, why did it have to be Don’t Starve Together?! Why couldn’t have been something like Minecraft?! At least _that_ game was relaxing, even if there were a few mobs that wanted to kill you! Heck, why couldn’t they be in Pokemon, where they could just go catch Pokemon and have Pokemon battles?!

Orion just stared at him. “The… Constant?”

“The Constant is what the Don’t Starve Together world is called,” he answered. “It’s like… it’s this world that’s trying to ensure that you die, basically.”

“I’m sorry, what?!”

“It makes more sense with the lore of the game, I swear!” Owen quickly said. “Don’t Starve Together is a multiplayer survival game where you and your friends try to survive in the Constant as long as you can! And it’s usually more fun when you’re playing it, not _living_ it!”

“I don’t know what _you’re_ talking about,” Kiel said with a wink. “This seems like a place I’d like to be in!”

Bethany stared at him, understandably not amused. “As someone who has died so many different ways in this game, no, it’s not.” And Owen agreed with that statement.

“So we’re currently in a world that wants to kill us,” Charm summed up. “Great.” 

“So is there a way out?” Gwen asked.

“Uh, not that I know…” Owen confessed. “But maybe we can figure out how we got here in the first place, we can use that to figure out how to get out of here!”

Everyone else nodded, murmuring in agreement.

“Okay, did anyone here talk to some shadow guy, or interact with some sort of shadow thing?”

He was only met with confused stares.

“Hey, that’s how a lot of the characters in the game ended up in the Constant according to the animations from Klei on YouTube!”

“I’m going to assume that for all of us, the answer is no,” Bethany told him.

All right, so they didn’t get here the normal way. Not that Owen knew how they could get out with that information. Probably best they didn’t know that.

“Hey, Bethany said that the thing behind you is a portal, right?” Kara asked, pointing to the Florid Postern.

“Yeah, in the game, the Florid Postern brings everyone into the Constant.”

“Then why don’t we just go through it and get out?”

Before he could stop her, Kara rushed past him to get to the Florid Postern… only to go right through the structure, still in the Constant. Surprised that she hadn’t succeeded, Kara fell forward to the ground from her momentum.

“Yeah… the Florid Postern only brings everyone here, and if you’re playing Endless Mode, it can revive you, but it doesn’t take you out of the world.”

“Aw, boo!” She stuck out her tongue in frustration, standing up and dusting herself off, then noticed the timewatch on her wrist. “Huh, I don’t remember having this on.”

Her eyes suddenly lit up as she got an idea. “Oh, hey! Maybe I can go back in time to see how we got here and stop it from happening!”

“Are you sure that can work?” Charm asked her. “Do you even know where or _when_ to look?” 

Kara shrugged, fiddling with the buttons. “Doesn’t hurt to try!”

A few seconds later, she frowned. “That’s… weird,” she said slowly. “My timewatch is… it isn’t right.”

Owen didn’t like the sound of that.

“What do you mean, ‘it isn’t right’?” Orion asked, worry slipping through his voice as he narrowed his eyes.

Kara held up her arm, showing everyone the device wrapped around her wrist. “Look. Usually, I can enter in a date and time, or maybe choose to move through the timestream forwards or backwards, but it just says ‘past.’ I… can’t do anything else.”

“Maybe it’ll just take you into the past, then!” Gwen said, quite optimistically as she usually did.

“But the past can mean _anything_ ,” Charm pointed out. “She could be taken anywhere from a few seconds before to thousands of years before.”

“Then there’s only one way to find out when I end up!” Kara slammed her hand onto her timewatch… only to not end up anywhere or anywhen else. She was still standing in the same spot, her hand on the timewatch on her wrist. Honestly, Owen almost thought the watch wasn’t working anymore.

At least, not working the way it was supposed to.

Either this was coincidental, or the timewatch really did something, because at Kara’s feet, a bright light appeared, a person seeming to materialize from it. When the light cleared, another Kara was now laying on the grass, like she was sleeping.

The Kara that was originally with them took a big step back, clearly startled by the sudden appearance of another her. “Did I do that?!” she asked, staring at her timewatch.

The other Kara suddenly opened her eyes, sitting up. “Where am I?!” she exclaimed, her eyes darting around quickly at everything around her. “What happened?!”

“I’d like to answer that, but honestly, I don’t even know myself,” the original Kara told her. “I think I… might’ve brought you here with the timewatch by accident…”

Other Kara looked up at her, her eyes wide. “The timewatch can do that?!”

“I-I thought it wasn’t supposed to!”

The original Kara kept pushing on the timewatch on her wrist, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything now. “Ugh, stupid thing isn’t working anymore.”

“How about trying to go to the future?” Bethany suggested. “Maybe you can go find a way to get out of here from then?”

The original Kara stopped slamming her hand on her timewatch, like she was considering Bethany’s words. “All right, I’ll try that.” The original Kara pressed a button on her timewatch, still frowning. “Still can’t enter an exact date and time, it just says ‘future’ now.”

Once again, she slammed her hand onto the watch, and once again, she was still standing where she was. Just like last time, a bright light appeared next to her, the other Kara scooting away cautiously.

And just like before, another Kara lay before them on the grass. Only this time, she wasn’t frightened or startled like the other one when her eyes opened.

“Looks like you figured out how to summon your past and future selves!” the third Kara said happily as she got to her feet.

No one said anything, just staring at her.

“Summon who now?” original Kara just said.

The third Kara looked around at the gang, as if she was surveying them. “I take it that you guys are trying to figure out how to get out of here, huh?”

They all nodded, except for the second Kara, who still didn’t know what was going on since none of them told her what had happened.

(Man, there were only three Karas, and this was confusing Owen already.)

The third Kara just sighed. “Hate to tell you guys, but so far, we’ve found no way out. Until you brought me here, we’ve just been surviving this world the best that we can.”

“Wait, how far into the future are you from?”

“About a couple days or so.”

Charm snorted, crossing her arms. “That’s not very far into the future.”

The third Kara turned to her, looking more serious than Owen had ever seen any Kara. “Maybe in other worlds, but here? It kind of is, especially when you’re trying to _survive_ that long in a place like this.”

“Did you at least figure out how we got here?” Orion asked.

“Oh yeah…” She sighed, pursing her lips. “Remember the guy who greeted you all when you got here?”

Silence.

“There was no one here but us when I woke up,” Kiel said.

“Actually… I think there _was_ someone else with us,” Gwen said slowly. “I-I remember someone speaking as I was just waking up, saying something about how the future is full of pure possibility…?”

At the mention of “pure possibility,” Owen felt his blood go cold.

“Wait, you’re saying _Nobody_ brought us here?!” original Kara cried out.

“Oh, I am going to _kill_ him if he decides to show his face here!!!” Charm growled dangerously, everyone taking a step away from her.

“How is that even possible?!” Bethany exclaimed. “I watched him turn into Pure Possibility in front of me!”

The third Kara just nodded in agreement. “Yeah, and because of that, there was always the possibility of him coming back.”

“W-what?”

“Okay. Bethany, you controlled Pure Possibility for a little, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Then you should know that with Pure Possibility, _anything_ is possible. That means that if it’s possible, there’s a chance that it’ll happen.”

Bethany’s eyes widened. “So you’re saying that turning into Pure Possibility didn’t actually kill him…”

“Mm-hm! He’s the one who brought us all here, or he’s the reason we’re somehow here.”

“But that still doesn’t make sense,” Owen pointed out. “According to the Don’t Starve lore, it’s always Maxwell or Charlie who bring people here. Or just Charlie now, since at this point of the lore, Maxwell should be a playable character.”

Third Kara shook her head. “Honestly, our best theory we have right now is that he’s somehow working for Charlie, but we don’t know why.”

With that said, she suddenly clapped her hands together with a smile, like a teacher trying to get her class’ attention. “Anyway, enough about that! We’ve wasted enough time talking, and I need to teach you guys how to survive!

“Owen and Bethany have played this game, so they can teach you the basics of survival and stuff, but I’ll be teaching you guys about your abilities and the advantages and disadvantages that come with them! Most of this might not make sense to you guys until Owen or Bethany explain some things, but I think it’s best to know what you guys got first.”

She pointed to the original Kara first. “I’ll start with me. As you learned, your timewatch doesn’t work the normal way anymore. Instead, you use it to summon our past and future selves to help you do tasks, like you already did!” She motioned to herself and the second Kara. “You have to alternate between summoning a past and future self though, and typically your future selves, like me, have a bit more knowledge than you, and your past selves, like her, have less. We still have our immunity to paradoxes, so summoning our past and future selves won’t affect the timeline in any way.”

Present Kara nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Oh, and also we all share the same health, hunger, and sanity, so if one of us gets hurt, we all feel it. Your past and future selves are weaker in general, and can die more easily. The more of us there are, the less health we have from the shared health, and if we all die, you only have about a third of your health remaining.”

“Wait, can we view our stats?” Owen asked. “Like, we can view our health and hunger and all that?”

Future Kara nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know how to explain it, though. You just… focus? Then you should be able to see it. It’s kind of weird.”

Owen had no idea what she meant by that, but he tried anyway. _Let’s see… see my stats, see my stats…_

And it… worked? He could see his hunger was already down a good amount, though still over halfway, and his sanity and health were still full. He also was able to view his inventory– which was empty, no surprise– and how much of the day had passed, which was about a third of the daytime. Not really good, since they had nothing with them to help them survive, but still enough time to get stuff before dark.

“This is… weird,” Charm commented, focusing on… probably her own stats. Owen couldn’t see anyone else’s stats, but it didn’t really matter. You couldn’t see anyone else’s stats when playing the game, anyway.

“Okay, back to your abilities,” Future Kara said.

Owen turned back to her, his stats now disappearing from his view. At least it wouldn’t be taking up his vision constantly, that was useful.

Future Kara pointed to Bethany next. “You still have your shapeshifting powers here, but you can only turn into things that exist in this world. It’s useful for hiding from most monsters, or if we need some sort of tool we don’t have the stuff for, but you still lose health, hunger, and sanity when you’re transformed. You also slowly lose health when we use you as, like, a pickaxe or an axe or something, and it’s harder for you to transform when your sanity is low. Also the shadow creature things aren’t fooled by your shapeshifting.”

Bethany nodded. “Got it.”

Kiel was next. “Look in your inventory, you should have a spellbook and a wandknife in there.”

Owen could only assume that Kiel was looking in his own inventory, when a large book suddenly popped into his hands. “Oh, cool!”

“You can use magic to do a bunch of different things, like restore health and hunger and all that stuff. We don’t know everything you can do yet, but there’s a lot of spells in there. However, using magic uses up some of your sanity, and the spells wear off eventually. The only thing we know for sure that your magic _can’t_ do is restore that sanity.”

“Well, that’s not so bad!” Kiel replied with a wink. “I think, at least. Eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Future Kara turned to Gwen. “Gwen, your stuff is more simple. You’re optimistic, so your sanity actually decreases slower than all of ours when you’re near anything that’s supposed to lower that sanity. Not only that, the rest of us can actually raise our own sanity a little just by being near you. However, you’re against violence, so you’re weaker than the rest of us as well.”

Gwen just smiled. “I don’t mind!” she said. “I’m sure there’s a bunch of other stuff I can do that doesn’t require strength, anyway!”

“Orion, in your inventory, you should still have your Twilight Staff.”

As she said that, a staff suddenly popped into Orion’s hands. “Neat!”

“That won’t break, so you can use that to fight monsters for as long as you want. Your strength and speed also correlate to your health and hunger, so the higher they are, the stronger and faster _you_ are. Also similar to Gwen, you don’t lose sanity in the darkness as fast, but everything else that drains sanity will affect you normally.”

Orion still looked visibly confused, but he just nodded without saying a word.

“Charm, your robotic parts make you stronger and smarter than all of us–”

  
  
“As they usually do,” Charm interrupted, rolling her eye.

“–so you can also build things without the use of a science machine. You can also sense stuff in the dark with your robotic eye, but that doesn’t protect you from Charlie, so you still need a light source to survive the night, and I don’t think you can sense Charlie herself.”

With the intensity Charm stared at Future Kara, it was obvious that she didn’t understand what any of that meant, and that was never a good sign.

“Owen can explain that a bit more,” Future Kara quickly said. “He understands the mechanics a lot better than I do. And speaking of Owen…”

She turned to him, and Owen couldn’t help but grin. He was pretty excited to know what his abilities were in the Constant.

“You don’t actually have any special physical abilities, which means you don’t have any advantages or disadvantages. However, you’re the one who knows the most about this game and how to survive, so you’re the one everyone turns to when we don’t know what’s going on. Which is honestly most of the time.”

Okay, that was kind of disappointing to know, but he quickly brushed that off. Before, Owen probably would’ve sulked about being the only one who wasn’t “special,” but for this, he figured it was probably better. He was basically like Wilson, the character he usually played as who also had no advantages or disadvantages in the game, and getting used to a different character’s abilities was kind of annoying. Besides, it wasn’t like he was useless; like Future Kara said, he was the one everyone turned to for help, and that was pretty exciting!

“So that should be everyone’s abilities,” Future Kara concluded. “We’ve wasted enough of the day, so let’s get to surviving, and hope we don’t starve!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this, I learned that writing multiple Karas together gets _really_ confusing lol
> 
> Also I promise things start happening by the next chapter! Bear with me!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bethany is pretty unsure of their survival. She's played the game and died countless times in game, but having to experience it in person? This won't end well...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FEEL SO BAD FOR NOT UPDATING THIS SOONER!!! But life happened and because life happened, I gained interest in other fic ideas, but I'm not abandoning this, I promise! Take a while to update? Yeah, sure. But I'm not abandoning this, I have a plan for the plot, even if it seems like there's no actual plot at the moment, and I've had this idea in my head for a while now, no way I'm abandoning this.

Bethany held back a groan. This was definitely not going to go well, especially for her. 

She didn’t have the same amount of knowledge of the game like Owen (he did a lot of research to help them try to survive as long as possible), but she had played the game enough times with him to know what she was doing. And to also know some of the many ways the game could kill you. (Owen had to revive her with way too many Tell-Tale Hearts to count.)

“So how do we do this?” Charm asked. “Surviving here, how does it work?”

“It mostly depends on the season,” Owen said, “but let’s start simple. Just collect whatever you can collect.” He bent down to pick the pink flower by his feet. “Also make sure to collect flowers, they’ll help with your sanity, and if you get twelve petals, you can make a garland, which will raise your sanity during the day.”

“Also get twigs and flint,” Bethany added as she walked to a sapling to collect the twigs from it. “We can use those to make tools like axes and pickaxes, we need those.”

“Oh, don’t forget grass!” Owen said, picking another flower. “We’ll need that for fire!”

And the nine of them got to work, all of them mostly silent, save for the future Kara teaching their Kara a bit more about survival and helping the past Kara get caught up with what was going on.

The quiet was too unsettling for Bethany as she gathered whatever she could find. Despite the creepiness of it, she kind of wished the music from the game was playing in the background. At least it could keep her even a little distracted from the fact that she was definitely going to die eventually.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but she had several pieces of cut grass, twigs, and flint when Gwen came up to her, handing her a garland. She looked up to Gwen’s smiling face, a garland already on top of her head.

“I noticed you didn’t really collect many flowers, so I got some more to make a garland for you,” she said.

Bethany couldn’t help but return Gwen’s smile, accepting the garland and placing it on her head. “Thanks, Gwen,” she said, before sitting down to start making an axe and pickaxe for herself.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you or Owen,” Gwen started, taking a seat next to Bethany, “what’s important about sanity? And who’s Charlie?”

Bethany focused onto her stats, which also allowed her to view the crafting menu, thankfully. She took some of the twigs and flint, making her tools.

“Sanity is really important in this game,” Bethany answered as she crafted. “If your sanity lowers enough, you start seeing these shadow creatures, and if it gets too low, they can hurt and kill you.”

She finished making the pickaxe and moved on to making an axe.

“As for Charlie, she’s the Night Monster who attacks you in the darkness, so you always want a light source with you for the night.” Bethany laughed, finishing her axe. “Owen sent me a bunch of websites and videos about the lore and made me learn it, so I can tell you that Maxwell used to rule the Constant before being freed from wherever he was, and then Charlie took over.”

A second axe made, she handed it to Gwen, equipping her own. “Here, we’ll need logs for fire.”

Gwen nodded as she took the axe, and the two girls got to chopping down some of the birch trees together.

“So what exactly do we need to survive?” Gwen asked as they worked. “You seem to have a good amount of knowledge like Owen!”

Bethany laughed at that statement, though this whole situation was far from funny. “Nah, Owen definitely knows way more. He actually looks stuff up on how to deal with different things in the game.

“As for survival, uh, for the first twenty days or something, we’ll need to start getting stuff ready, especially for winter,” she said. “We need food sources, light sources, and anything to keep our sanity up. Owen and I also usually build a base to survive and prepare everything. Speaking of…”

She finished chopping down a birch tree before calling out to Owen. “Hey, do you wanna build a base around here, or do we search for a better spot?”

Owen picked up the cut grass that he had just got. “I’d prefer we find somewhere else,” he replied. “If we find a beefalo herd or a pig village, I think we should build our base near there.” 

She gave him a quick thumbs up before turning back to Gwen, who tilted her head.

“Beefalo?”

“They’re kind of like… yak buffalo things? Wait, no, you don’t know what yaks or buffalo are either. Whatever, you’ll see the beefalo at some point.” 

And before Bethany could say more, someone screamed. She and Gwen turned their heads, finding Orion running from several frogs, probably about seven.

“Why did you anger the frogs?!” Owen yelled at him.

“It attacked me and stole my grass so I attacked back!” Orion yelled back, not stopping. “I didn’t think they’d all gang up on me!”

“That’s what frogs do in this world!”

“How was I supposed to know?!”

Bethany sighed, her axe still in hand. “Come on, we better go help him,” she told Gwen.

“So what do we do?” the other girl asked.

“Just help me kill the frogs. They’ll give us frog legs, which we can cook for food later.”

So with their axes, the two girls fought the frogs that were hopping after Orion, though they were now after the two of them instead since they chose to attack. Bethany found it weird having to physically run from them instead of using a keyboard to attack then fall back to avoid their tongues before attacking again, but at least she knew the strategy and could eventually adjust. Gwen didn’t really have the same amount of luck, with the frogs stealing her stuff, but after seeing what Bethany was doing, she managed to dodge them a little better. Orion eventually assisted, hitting the frogs with his staff.

Not too long after, all the frogs were finally dead, frog legs remaining in their places. Bethany checked her health, which thankfully was still way above halfway, so she wasn’t going to be dying soon. That was good, dying on the first day would’ve been embarrassing.

“Hey, Owen! We got food for tonight!” Bethany announced as Gwen and Orion helped her pick up the frog legs.

Owen gave her a thumbs up, felling another tree as his axe broke.

“There’s enough here for everyone!” Gwen exclaimed.

“Yeah, but it’s not really enough to keep everyone’s hunger up,” Bethany told her, the other girl and Orion gathering up the items that the frogs had stolen from them.

“What do you mean?” Orion asked. “There’s enough here for a full meal.”

“In the game, your hunger is constantly going down, so you’ll basically want to eat a lot throughout the day,” Bethany explained. “Certain foods only bring your hunger up a certain amount, and cooked frog legs give a pretty good amount of hunger, but if we could cook with a crockpot, that’d be even better.”

Orion groaned. “Okay, why does this all have to be so complicated?!”

Bethany shrugged. “Like Owen said, the world is trying to kill us. When we played, we usually just looked stuff up as we encountered them.”

“Well, problem with that is that now you can’t do that anymore. Unless you somehow have service on your phone here.”

Bethany shook her head. “My phone didn’t come with me, unfortunately.”

As she said that, Bethany’s mind quickly went to her parents. Oh God, how long have they been here? Was it for long? Hopefully not, her parents would be so worried! And now that she didn’t have her phone on her, they couldn’t call her!

Ugh, stupid Nobody. After she just got her dad back last year, he’s separating them again?! He was going to  _ pay _ . 

If she found him. She was more concerned about getting home rather than seeing Nobody again. Not that she wanted to see him again.

“We have some time before dusk,” Bethany told them. “Let’s get some berries and carrots before then.”

There weren’t too many berry bushes where they were. Really, it was only four. So not everyone would be getting berries. There were a lot of carrots around them though, so that was something.

It wasn’t long before dusk fell, the sky above them becoming darker as the sun set.

“Okay, we should probably build a campfire soon,” Owen said. “In the morning, we should start looking for a good place to make a base.”

“I mean, there’s still some time before it’s actually night,” Bethany said, checking the time. “It’s only the first day, so evening should be pretty long before night hits, we can start searching now. Besides, it’ll save resources so we don’t have to keep a fire running as long.”

Owen pursed his lips, clearly unsure. “I guess… But I don’t want a repeat of that time we forgot to check the time.”

Oh yeah, that. At that time, Owen and Bethany had been fairly new to the game; the two of them had been so focused on collecting supplies that they forgot to make a fire for the night. At least they had been able to build one before Charlie could kill them, but still. That wouldn’t be fun if it happened to them now.

“Okay, we can get going soon, but I wanna try something first. You guys can keep getting stuff.”

She took Gwen’s hand, bringing her over to one of the berry bushes they had picked. “Okay, Kara said I could turn into stuff in the Constant, so when I turn into a shovel, use me to dig up this bush, okay?”

Gwen looked hesitant. “She said you’d lose health if we used you, though,” she reminded her. “Are you sure?”

Bethany shrugged. “It can’t be  _ that _ bad. Besides, we’ll want berry bushes for our base.”

Gwen still looked unconvinced, but this time, she nodded in agreement.

Easily, with a  _ pop _ , Bethany was now a shovel. She felt Gwen pick her up, gripping her handle and shoving her head into the ground.

“ _ OW _ !” she exclaimed, transforming back into herself.

Startled, Gwen fell backwards onto the ground, Bethany still in her arms. “Oh my gosh, are you okay?!” she quickly asked. “I didn’t hurt you too badly, did I?!”

“No, no! Don’t worry!” Bethany told her, getting off of Gwen as fast as she could and helping her back up. “I just… didn’t expect it to really hurt.”

For some reason, Bethany never considered that she’d be able to feel pain while they were in the Constant. This was a world full of suffering, what made her think it’d be painless?

Wait, if she could feel pain, how much health did she lose just now? She went to check her stats…

1 health??? She only lost  _ 1 health _ ??? What the heck???

Seeing that worried her. If losing 1 health hurt that much, how much would attacks from the creatures in the Constant hurt? She was lucky to have avoided the attacks of the frogs, but Gwen and Orion…

She shook her head. They could heal up with food when they made camp. “Okay, I’m ready this time,” she told Gwen. 

Focusing again, she turned back into the shovel. This time, it seemed to take longer for Gwen to pick her up. Most likely hesitant after Bethany’s cry of pain earlier. Understandable. Bethany wasn’t really prepared for the pain again.

And as Gwen shoved her head back into the dirt, she held back the urge to scream again. God, it  _ hurt _ , so bad that if she had eyes at the moment, she would’ve cried. And she wanted to, but she fought her want to turn back to a human. No, they needed these berry bushes! She could handle this pain about three more times! Maybe…

She was able to, but only barely. The moment Gwen dug up the final berry bush, Bethany didn’t hesitate turning back human. Immediately, she could feel the tears pouring down her face. Her head was throbbing, and the world immediately tilted as she stood.

“Oh gosh, Bethany!” Gwen exclaimed, catching her in her arms.

“I’m fine…” Bethany managed to groan. God, it hurt so bad…

“Bethany!”

Owen came rushing over. “What happened??? Are you okay??? Maybe we should stay–”

“I’m fine!”   
  
She wasn’t fine. But she wasn’t going to be the one to hinder their survival. This was not going to be like all the times she played this stupid game.

“But you’re hurt–” 

“Owen, we need to find a place to set up base as soon as possible.” The world was still spinning, even if not as much, but she was able to keep her voice low and steady. “Besides, this is the least of our worries.”

Owen opened his mouth, most likely to argue, before just closing it and sighing. “Fine, we better start heading somewhere, then.”

Gwen and Bethany both nodded silently before Owen called out to the others. “Hey, guys! We better start finding a place to set up base!”

From a bit away, Kiel winked. Or at least, Bethany was sure he winked. No, he definitely winked. “All right! Where to?”

Owen blinked. “Are you asking me?”

“You  _ are _ the one that knows the most about this game,” one of the Karas told him. (Which one was she?)

“Um…” He looked around, clearly not used to being the leader, his face turning red as the others approached him. “Uh… let’s go this way.” He pointed off in a random direction, before going that way himself, everyone else following behind.

They were all quiet as they walked, nothing but the crunching of the grass under their feet being heard. Bethany looked to all of them as Gwen carefully guided her along, wondering what they were thinking. Did they know just how much danger they were all in? How deadly this world was? 

Everyone continued to walk in silence for… Bethany wasn’t sure how long. Did time here work the same way it did back home? It was so hard to tell.

She checked her stats as they continued to trek along the grass. Some health was lost, but not too much, that was good. Sanity was draining despite her garland, but that was expected during the dusk phase in this game. Not as much as usual, though. The positivity effects from Gwen, maybe? As for her hunger…

She hadn’t eaten that whole time. And she could feel her stomach aching with hunger, growling as they continued. She held her stomach as they continued to walk. Great, a headache and a fairly empty stomach. At least she wasn’t starving yet, according to her stats, but it was still physically painful.

Was this how Willow felt when Bethany played as her? It was a video game, but knowing that fictional characters were really out there… 

Hm. Maybe she should apologize to Willow next time she played Don’t Starve Together. Assuming the seven of them made it out alive.

“Let’s set up camp for the night,” Owen declared, stopping in his tracks.

“Good, because I’m tired of walking,” one of the Karas complained, collapsing onto the ground.

Gwen carefully helped Bethany sit down, everyone else now sitting or laying on the ground, Owen building a campfire with some cut grass and logs. As the fire began to dance in front of the seven of them, the sun finally set, stranding the group in pitch darkness, aside from the light from their campfire.

All of a sudden, it felt like they weren’t alone. While in most cases that was preferred, this time it made Bethany uneasy.

“We can cook our food with this fire,” Owen said. “Make sure you all eat, the last thing we want anyone doing is starving.”

“That’s the point of the game, isn’t it?” Orion pointed out. “Says so right in the title, if I remember correctly.”

Bethany found herself giggling slightly at that statement. Really, the situation they were in was no laughing matter, but laughing helped her feel a little better from all this.

“Also make sure the fire keeps burning,” Owen continued. “We need to avoid being in complete darkness.”

“You’re scared of the dark, just grow up,” Charm growled, rolling her eye.

Owen blushed as he cooked his carrots, though maybe it was just the light emitted from the fire and onto his face. “It’s… not that, actually…”

“It’s Charlie,” one of the Karas said rather grimly. Bethany was sure that one was the Future Kara. “She can only attack you when you’re in the dark, but she’s constantly waiting for someone to step into the darkness to kill you…”

A brief hesitation from everyone.

“Is that why it feels like we’re… being watched?” Orion asked.

Silence, aside from the crackling of the fire.

Bethany didn’t want to think about what monsters awaited them in the surrounding darkness. Instead, she focused on cooking her berries, her birch nuts, and her frog legs. Quietly, she passed out the cooked frog legs to the others before eating a couple of her own. At least her hunger was doing better now. And the headache was fading.

“You should get some rest,” Gwen told her softly.

Bethany shook her head. “I’m not sure I can sleep right now.” She really wasn’t. In the game, as far as she knew, you needed some sort of sleeping roll or something to sleep in the game, but that would cost hunger greatly. And with the unsettling feeling of knowing something was out there ready to kill her, she  _ really _ didn’t want to sleep. In fact, the idea of falling asleep now terrified her.

Gwen gently held her hand, giving her a gentle smile. “Then I’ll stay awake with you, if it’ll help, even if it’s only a little bit.”

Bethany couldn’t help but smile back. What did she do to deserve Gwen in her life? “Thank you,” she replied. “Really.”

In silence, they sat through the night, nothing but the flames of the fire moving through the still night. From the darkness around them, noises taunted them, ominous eyes stared. The Constant mocked them. A peaceful sleep was impossible.

And their first day of surviving ended.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully, this idea of mine actually follows through. i have a very rough plan/outline as to how this will go, so hopefully i'll finish eventually. me playing a lot of DST with my cousin lately may help my motivation for this.
> 
> if this ends up unfinished/canceled, im so sorry. i blame my brain for having too many ideas.


End file.
